Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you • Hacker News Board

Re: Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you

#61

Post by leetcrew » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

Judgmentality wrote: post #56

K0balt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually up to a weight for weight match or even more in the case of lighter humans, a single dog is trivial to defeat in combat unless it is properly trained to never fully engage and only to tear and dash. If a person reacts aggressively and not trying to escape, a dog is easily defeated. Just have to protect your throat and keep facing the dog. Allow it to grab you on a limb , preferably a hand or arm, and you hav…

I can't tell if this is a serious comment or not, but if you're being serious this is horrible advice. Some dogs bites are strong enough to crush bones, and they aren't even 100 pounds. You want to willingly give them a limb so they can actually snap it in half? Sure, if you're fighting a 50 pound Australian Shepherd, have at it. If you're fighting a 150 pound German Shepherd, you're going to die.

yeah I've seen a chessie crush a deer's skull in his mouth, seemed pretty casual for him too. I'm certainly not gonna try this with any guard breeds.

Re: Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you

#62

Post by wreath » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

at_a_remove wrote: post #40

I had a cat who would become upset if my mother and I were having a fight. She would immediately begin "yelling" at my mother and once scratched her. The scratching was especially funny given the situation: we had a rug that kept getting moved, my mother was convinced that I kept moving it, when I had not. She kept arguing this, the cat came over, yelled, eventually scratched her when that didn't work, then annoyed w…

Oh man thanks for the good laugh!

Re: Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you

#63

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #61

Judgmentality wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if this is a serious comment or not, but if you're being serious this is horrible advice. Some dogs bites are strong enough to crush bones, and they aren't even 100 pounds. You want to willingly give them a limb so they can actually snap it in half? Sure, if you're fighting a 50 pound Australian Shepherd, have at it. If you're fighting a 150 pound German Shepherd, you're going to die.

yeah I've seen a chessie crush a deer's skull in his mouth, seemed pretty casual for him too. I'm certainly not gonna try this with any guard breeds.

A Neapolitan mastiff I lived with was swimming next to me, he wasn’t super comfortable in water and as we were swimming he bit into my forearm and hit bone.

He didn’t mean it at all. I don’t even think he knew it happened. He was pretty dumb, but that is beside the point.

OP’s advice isn’t actually awful. If I actually had to fight Ben Dog, I would have no option but to go into the mouth. Same for grizzlies. But.... I would not want to do this and am certain I would take a lot of damage.

This would be a case where the only way to win would be to avoid.

Re: Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you

#64

Post by joverholt » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

AltruisticGapHN wrote: post #49

I’ve been amazed by how playful and responsive some cats are on YouTube. I noticed one thing common in all these videos, or streams also on Twitch : you can see that these cats receive attention and are loved very much, they are treated with respect and get lots of interaction.

A cat is like a mirror. You get what you put in to a cat, most of the times. Treat it with love and respect, it will return it. Treat it like an annoyance, it will treat you the same way!

Re: Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you

#65

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

jdking wrote: post #51

K0balt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually up to a weight for weight match or even more in the case of lighter humans, a single dog is trivial to defeat in combat unless it is properly trained to never fully engage and only to tear and dash. If a person reacts aggressively and not trying to escape, a dog is easily defeated. Just have to protect your throat and keep facing the dog. Allow it to grab you on a limb , preferably a hand or arm, and you hav…

This is the weirdest comment I’ve ever read on HN!

As poorly conceived as it sounds. It’s not wrong. It’s the same advice for grizzly bears. You need to straight up break the animals instincts from attack to protect, and a non-armed way to go that is to attack eyes or mouth and eyes are hard to go to. Bears specifically have strong gag reflexes, IDK about dogs.

Re: Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you

#66

Post by jbotz » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

tareqak wrote: post #35

The article title asks “Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you”, but the experiment that the article discusses has “helper”, “non-helper”, and passive actors. Maybe cats do not make the same association that dogs seem to do in this experiment that not helping is the same thing as harming? The question of reacting to harm incurred by a human companion would be better answered if the action that the animals obs…

Agreed. I'm a big believer in animal intelligence and I've lived with both cats and dogs, and this setup seems to me to be difficult for cats to understand, too abstract and removed from cat's natural capacities. They made no effort to establish that the subject animal had any understanding of what was happening before varying the experimental parameters. Basically I would say this experiment is useless as it is; it's just not good science.

Re: Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you

#67

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

jrururufuf666 wrote: post #42

leetcrew wrote: post #19

there's also the obvious fact that a cat isn't a credible threat to a human. there's no point in "punishing" a creature that weighs 15-25 times as much as you do. would you try to "punish" an elephant if you were unarmed? conversely, any creature that a cat can credibly deter is not a lethal threat to a human. I imagine a large dog understands, at least on some level, that it can actually win a fight against a human.…

a house-cat can easily kill a human.

If you don’t get prompt medical attention for the likely infection from the bite, sure.

But that’s a bit of a delayed effect.

Re: Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you

#68

Post by leetcrew » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

jrururufuf666 wrote: post #42

leetcrew wrote: post #19

there's also the obvious fact that a cat isn't a credible threat to a human. there's no point in "punishing" a creature that weighs 15-25 times as much as you do. would you try to "punish" an elephant if you were unarmed? conversely, any creature that a cat can credibly deter is not a lethal threat to a human. I imagine a large dog understands, at least on some level, that it can actually win a fight against a human.…

a house-cat can easily kill a human.

maybe via infection, and over a few days at that. unless the cat gets spectacularly lucky, it can't scratch you badly enough that you bleed out on the spot. cats typically kill by severing the neck vertebrae with their jaws. a house cat isn't strong enough to do this to a human.

Re: Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you

#69

Post by clairity » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #59

tareqak wrote: post #35

The article title asks “Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you”, but the experiment that the article discusses has “helper”, “non-helper”, and passive actors. Maybe cats do not make the same association that dogs seem to do in this experiment that not helping is the same thing as harming? The question of reacting to harm incurred by a human companion would be better answered if the action that the animals obs…

I agree. "Not helping" is a much harder cue to pick up than an actual aggression. As the article mentions: > " So we shouldn’t be too quick to conclude that our cats don’t care if people are mean to us. What’s more likely is that they just can’t tell." Cat's social theory of mind is different from humans and dogs. Cats do understand 1-1 relations (between them and other people) but relations between other people are…

yes, cats are very curious and perceptive, constantly trying to figure out how the world works (and how to eat that bird outside the window!). just because they don’t perceive the human problem in this case doesn’t mean they don’t generally want to help.

cats are social, just not the same way dogs or humans are, and they form habits based on things they’ve figured out about the world (the litterbox being a good example, a hybrid instinct & learned social behavior). my cat has figured out that her human and her canine sister are harmless to her and she can relax and even play and cuddle with us. she’s also food motivated, so can be trained on that basis.

Re: Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you

#70

Post by btmcnellis » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

jbotz wrote: post #66

tareqak wrote: post #35

The article title asks “Why cats won’t punish a stranger who harms you”, but the experiment that the article discusses has “helper”, “non-helper”, and passive actors. Maybe cats do not make the same association that dogs seem to do in this experiment that not helping is the same thing as harming? The question of reacting to harm incurred by a human companion would be better answered if the action that the animals obs…

Agreed. I'm a big believer in animal intelligence and I've lived with both cats and dogs, and this setup seems to me to be difficult for cats to understand, too abstract and removed from cat's natural capacities. They made no effort to establish that the subject animal had any understanding of what was happening before varying the experimental parameters. Basically I would say this experiment is useless as it is; it'…

I don’t think it’s necessarily bad science. The null hypothesis is that cats would react the same as dogs, and the study suggests that’s not true. While this is not surprising to most people, it is still a more rigorous attempt to understand the differences between cats and dogs than simple intuition and anecdotal experience. I do think the experimenters should probably have done a follow-up study more attuned to cats’ natural abilities, but they likely feel the same way.